With SEO, every business or service provider can take advantage of getting easily found by their customers or clients.
The same goes for law firms where you can boost your online presence. This increases your chances of gaining new clients.
In this guide, I’ll discuss the methods to improve your law firm's SEO, so let's get started!
What is Law Firm SEO?
Law firm SEO (also known as Lawyers SEO or attorney SEO) is the practice of optimizing legal websites to appear higher for relevant search queries.
It involves all those practices that are usually done for SEO purposes but with a customized approach for law firms.
Why is it Important?
There is no limit to SEO benefits for a business.
When you make a proper plan to execute your SEO strategy for the right audience, you yield its benefits for a long time.
Moreover, it is a free way to boost your online presence as you do not need to pay for services like Google Ads.
If you know how to write, it gives you an extra benefit as you have first-hand experience with legal issues.
Combining writing with your first-hand experience establishes you as an authority in your field and gives you an edge in creating a winning SEO strategy.
However, keep in mind that SEO takes time and requires a lot of patience to see the results. Usually, it takes more than 6 months to get measurable results.
So if you have that commitment and dedication to work, nothing will stop you from seeing the improved results and standing out from your competitors.
Who’s That Guide For?
The purpose of this guide is to help legal advisors reach the right clients. It’s easy to understand and implement.
If followed properly, you will definitely start seeing the results within a few months.
This guide is for:
Law firms/lawyers/legal advisors: They can benefit from SEO services and establish themselves as an authority in their industry. They already know about legal issues. A small dedication to learning basic SEO skills can help them boost their online presence.
SEO agencies: This guide will also help SEO agencies to refine their processes for further improvements.
Individual SEOs/freelancers: If you are an individual doing SEO or a freelancer, this SEO guide for lawyers is a useful resource to adopt strategies for your clients and implement them in a step-by-step manner.
In-house marketing team: Marketers in an in-house setup looking for an effective and free method to boost their client's organic traffic may also use this guide.
To sum it all up, this SEO guide for lawyers will help anyone who is into learning and implementing SEO. Whether they want it for their own project or a client, it is the ultimate solution to enhance visibility.
How to Do SEO for Law Firms?
Stick with this guide and you will know how to do this in a step-by-step manner:
Provide a List of Your Services
Before doing anything, you must have a clear picture in your mind of all the services you provide.
List them all because in later stages this is going to help you a lot especially while doing keyword research.
Here you need to follow a pillar page and content cluster model.
It is better to have a pillar page with your main service and then enlist all the sub-services and link out to their separate pages.
For example, if you offer family law services, you can have a pillar or main page in family law with all the relevant information and further subcategories or content clusters.
These categories may include property disputes, child custody, parallel proceedings, etc. like this:
You can see all categories are mentioned with a link to their individual pages.
This approach (we call content hubs) benefits you in several ways:
Covering a topic comprehensively and interlinking to related content shows the semantic relationship between pages and establishes you as an authority.
When pages are linked to one another they get benefit from each other’s backlinks in the form of link juice.
Content hubs are considered a valuable source of information. Creating a hub for your law firm indicates you are offering something truly helpful in your niche. This increases your chances of getting backlinks from other relevant sources.
This structure makes navigation easy for both users and search engines.
Quick Tip: If you offer law services related to multiple industries like music, art, nonprofit, etc. then I recommend you to create separate hubs for all of them. This way you will be able to target more keywords as well as provide a clear path of information or website structure to your clients.
Mention your Location
If you provide services in multiple locations, you need to mention it on your website. This way it will make it easier for Google to index your website for local search queries.
You can specify all those locations but that would be a tedious task or it may cause duplicate content issues. But here is an easy way.
Just create a general “Contact Us” page and add your location details there along with your address, contact information, etc. This page will act as a main page for visitors to find contact details for any location.
Also, add all those locations in the footer of your website and link them to the main “Contact Us” page.
If you want to provide additional details about any particular location, then you may create separate pages for each location.
Link to those pages from the main “Contact Us” page. This will keep it centralized while also allowing the visitors to access the additional details on dedicated pages for each location.
Make sure to accurately and separately add each location to your Google Business Profile with proper details. This will increase its chances of appearing in local search results for a particular location.
Do Keyword Research
Here comes another most important step: keyword research.
If we want to rank for the services we’ve mentioned, then we must find the keywords related to them.
Look for the keywords people are searching for and that are relevant to your firm or services. You will then use those keywords to create your website content, blog posts, landing pages, etc.
But for that, you will need a keyword research tool. Ideally, it's good to use a paid tool like ahrefs or Semrush as they are more reliable and offer several features.
Additionally, you can check our list of top keyword generators and choose the one that suits your needs and budget.
Here are some ways to find plenty of keywords related to your services. (I used Semrush Keyword Magic Tool for my keyword research process)
Just enter a seed keyword like “media law” and click the “Related” option. This will show you a list of keywords related to your main keyword.
Another way is to extract the keywords of your competitors and then target them in your SEO strategy. Open the “Domain Overview” option and enter the URL of a competitor.
See its “Top Organic Keywords” section and click “View Details” for a list of keywords that this domain is ranking for.
Once you have a huge list of keywords, you need to sort that list by making keyword groups. You will choose one focus keyword to write content on. This main keyword will be supported by adding more relevant keywords that will play a supporting role. Eliminate all those that aren't relevant.
There isn’t only one or two ways to find keywords. You can use several methods to ease your keyword hunt journey. So I would suggest you read my detailed guide on keyword research to learn about all the best methods to find more keywords.
Create Optimized Content
Now you have your keywords list. What you need next is to create optimized content for those keywords.
But first, make sure to identify search intent. But how would you do that?
Just enter your main keyword and see the search results on the first pages.
See which type of content is ranking there and what their format is. If there are how-to guides, listicles or informational articles, you need to follow the same pattern as it indicates that people are searching for it.
If you go against the search intent, you are unlikely to get ranked.
Keep in mind it is not enough to just add or simply rewrite whatever you saw on the internet. You need to cover a topic comprehensively and provide additional value.
This is what Google recommends:
Suggested Reading: To understand search intent and master it fully, see our guide on it.
So what makes content quality content? If you want to write quality content you must keep a few things in mind:
Make use of simple language. Writing legal content without jargon isn’t possible but you can explain the technical terms in plain, easy-to-understand language.
Google prioritizes content with first-hand experience. So if you are a lawyer you can give your best. It will not only benefit the users but will also tell Google about the content's authoritativeness.
Do not just write large blocks of content. Divide your content into small sections by using headings, subheadings, bullets, or numbered lists.
Keep your content always relevant and updated.
While concluding your blog or a particular section, do not forget to give your own opinions. People want a definitive answer from an expert. When they are confused about what to do, they love to get a to-the-point answer from an expert. So providing that answer will not only help them make a decision but will also make them rely on you.
Recommended Reading: What Is Content Optimization - A Complete Guide
Follows Google E-E-A-T
Google E-E-A-T (Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness) is a criteria set by Google to measure the quality, credibility and authority of a website’s content.
Its importance further increases for YMYL topics.
Google has set the highest standards for YMYL topics as they can have a severe impact on people and their decision-making.
YMYL (Your Money Your Life) topics are those that can have a significant impact on the lives of people, like health, finance, and legal matters. So they must be chosen and written carefully.
It is best if you are a subject matter expert because it will deliver the quality as well as demonstrate the E-E-A-T.
So it is best to add a dedicated section or page on your website, where you have listed all the lawyers or legal advisors along with their educational background and experience.
This demonstrates to Google that you have a team of accomplished people. By adding authors at the end of each blog they have written, you tell Google about the trustworthiness of your content.
This is what Google loves and needs to rank a website.
Write a Compelling Meta Title and Description
A title tag appears in the search results and tells Google and users what your page is about.
There are a few things that you should keep in mind while writing your title tags:
Make your titles enticing by using “power words” like perfect, remarkable, etc.
Do not forget to add your focus keyword in the title, especially at the beginning to show relevance to search engines.
Keep it 55 characters long to avoid cutting off letters or words by search engines.
Meta description, on the other hand, is a short summary of your page or post that appears just below the title tag.
It isn't a direct ranking factor but may contribute to it indirectly by increasing CTR.
It is not necessary that Google will always choose the meta description set by you. It may choose one on its own that it thinks is more relevant.
However, keep those things in mind while writing meta descriptions:
Use simple language to make people understand the content of the page.
Use phrases like “Learn more”, “Read on”, “Jump in” etc to encourage users to click on it.
Keep it short, ideally under 150 characters.
Just like the meta title, add your focus keyword there too.
Directly address the searchers and meet their intent.
Use Descriptive URLs
There are a few general rules for URL optimization:
Add relevant or focus keywords in your post URL.
Make use of hyphens to separate different words in a URL as it is standard and recommended way.
Strictly avoid adding dates.
Make it easily readable by humans.
Get an SSL certificate as it indicates a secure and private connection.
Remove stop words as they unnecessarily make the URLs long.
Keep them concise and descriptive.
Add Internal Links
Internal links direct the users towards other useful resources on the same website.
This helps Google crawl your website pages more efficiently and makes the content user-friendly.
While writing content, you will find several other posts on your website that can help the users explore a topic more.
You can add internal links there to let people understand a topic in detail.
Internal links are also useful from an SEO point of view. They transfer the link equity that helps those pages rank higher too.
While doing internal linking, keep a few things in mind:
Those links must be relevant
They should be added naturally
Anchor text should not be misleading
Do not use the same anchor text for two different pages
Though you can do all this process manually, some tools can also speed up this process such as the ahrefs Site Audit tool.
To do this, you need to run a site crawl. Once completed, it will tell you which pages to link to and from. This will also tell the anchor text or keyword to use while linking.
Optimize Images
Adding visuals like images makes a post more appealing. But do you know those images must be optimized otherwise they may slow down your website speed. You can do this in the following ways:
If the images on your website are too large, you need to compress them to optimize the speed. WordPress users can use several plugins to perform this task. Whereas, there are other free tools available online, that will help you in compressing the image files.
Do not use generic file names like “Image1.jpg”. Make sure the name of your image file is descriptive, has a keyword and precisely describes the image.
The same goes for alt text. It helps Google understand the image and show it in the relevant search results. Moreover, it also helps visually impaired people. So you must keep the alt text descriptive as well as concise.
Grow Your Backlink Profile
The links from other relevant websites to your website play a major role in improving your ranking.
Keep in mind quality of links matters more than quantity. So you must focus on those that are relevant to your niche and come from high authority sites.
There are several methods of growing your backlink profile.
One way is to earn backlinks by creating high-quality content. This makes other websites link to your content because of the value it provides.
Another way is to approach the relevant industry experts or sites to link back to you. It includes several practices like guest posting, link exchange, HARO, press releases, etc.
Recommended Reading: Covering all those approaches in a single post will go beyond its scope. So I recommend you read my detailed guide on backlinks and link-building practices.
What is Link Building & its Most Common Strategies
Optimize for Google Map Pack
“Map Pack” is a Google SERP feature that enlists three map-based results at the top of search results for local businesses.
When you search for a particular local service, Google shows you a list of local businesses that are relevant and features highly ranked businesses based on local ranking.
So that would be the first thing a searcher is going to see when they look for a service relevant to you. So why not optimize this place to get more visibility?
You can do a few things to appear for relevant local searchers:
Make sure to add the accurate information that best describes your business and matches the search intent of your potential clients.
Focus on getting positive reviews from your clients. Encourage them to leave a review and rate your services. If there is any negative feedback, address their issues.
Get listed on local directories or citation sites. These sites allow you to add all the relevant details of your local business/service. Adding this information will help searchers find your business easily while also allowing search engines to find and display it more effectively in search results.
Optimize your Google Business Profile by properly mentioning your physical location, contact information, and all other relevant details. Learn how to optimize your GBP in this detailed guide. That’s enough to understand, implement, and increase your chance of showing up in the local map pack.
Quick Tip: One quick method to save tons of your time is to use a tool like ahrefs Link Intersect or Semrush Backlink Gap. They allow you to see all the websites that link to your competitors but not to you. This way you will find plenty of link-building opportunities.
Keep an Eye on Your Site Health
No matter how well you have done keyword research, or how good your content is, if there are technical issues on your website, visitors aren't going to stay there for long.
It will also increase your website bounce rate. So to ensure a good user experience, it is recommended to regularly monitor your website for technical issues.
A site audit tool like “Screaming Frog” is best for that purpose. It is a desktop-based site audit tool that offers maximum efficiency and accuracy.
Download and install Screaming Frog on your desktop. Enter the URL of your website.
Once an audit is completed, it will show you a detailed list of all the errors (more than 300). It may show you broken links, redirect issues, slow page load time, response code warnings, etc.
Fix them and make sure that your website is easily crawlable and indexable by search engines.
Measure your Performance
You aren’t going to improve your website if you are not tracking its progress.
With Google Search Console and Google Analytics, you can see your traffic, rankings, top pages, keywords, and a lot of other useful information.
These tools are free and give you unlimited opportunities to explore a number of metrics about your website performance.
Besides these two, Google Business Profile also allow you to track your progress.
It shows you data on several metrics like the number of profile views, keywords that bring those views, direction requests, etc.
Google's own data is enough to track your progress.
But if you want to go for a paid tool, there are several other options to track your Map Pack performance. Some of them are BrightLocal, Local Viking and Whitespark.
The Bottom Line
SEO for lawyers isn't something that will give you results overnight.
You need to stay consistent throughout your journey.
Focus on creating high-quality content, updating old content, meeting search intent, building backlinks, and implementing all the strategies mentioned above.
Once you are on the right track nothing will stop you from occupying the top positions in search results.